Coatings Channel

The widespread phenomenon of fretting is a form of wear found between pairs of components that are normally designed to have no relative movement or at least very limited amounts. We often find evidence of fretting on splines, where the degree of axi...
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The applications of plating in a racing powertrain aren’t as widespread as we might find in an automotive engine. Engines in general are reasonably benign environments for metallic components: oil is an excellent anti-corrosion fluid and most o...
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DLC (diamond-like carbon) coatings are basically diamond, as their name suggests, but most of the coatings marketed as DLC are not these crystalline diamond coatings. Many people labour under the impression that DLC is one coating, but it is in fact ...
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In the past 15 years or so there has been a huge change in the range of coatings for metallic components in motorsport, with many more suppliers and a much wider choice. Before then, and in terms of hard-wearing coatings, these often implied adding a...
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PVD coatings are used very widely, and cover everything from the metallic coating on the inside of crisp packets to the hard engineering coatings such as titanium nitride (TiN) that we are more familiar with. However, we are most interested in the ha...
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Rolling element bearings continue to develop to meet the needs of ever-increasing speeds and loads. We might expect that there would be few applications of engineering coatings to these components, but there is a growing number of applications for wh...
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We have discussed a number of applications for thermal barrier coatings in RET-Monitor, and also in RET magazine. Most of these are concerned either with maintaining the heat within the exhaust gas flow for improving turbocharger transient response o...
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The main use for ceramic coatings for racing powertrains is on exhaust system components and various heat shields. The very low thermal conductivity of many metal oxides makes them ideal candidates where we would like a coating to reduce heat transfe...
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This month's RET-Monitor article on materials discusses some of the uses of polymer materials for manufacturing race engine components. Polymers, in comparison to most engineering metals, generally lack strength and stiffness. They are also often mor...
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The technique of electroless nickel plating has been used widely in race engines for a long time. Electroless nickel is a family of coatings rather than a single coating, and a number of electroless nickel 'composite' coatings are available. Even whe...
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Titanium is a strange material, not least for the myths surrounding it. It is often described as being incredibly hard, or incredibly strong, when the truth is that it is neither. It can be impressively strong compared to its density, but it does not stand out in this respect. It has been very ex… read article »